Eva Kay turned 1 yesterday. It is hard to believe it was a year ago that we (Rebekah (Heart Cries) and I) were speeding down the road in an ambulance when after only 30 min of Labor Eva came into the world. You can read the full story in a previous post. We celebrated her birthday over the weekend and had a wonderful time with family and friends. The party was winding down and guests were leaving. Only my parents, sister and brother-in-law and best friends were left. The guys were watching football...when the FLOOD happened. Ben, (Rebekah's husband) described it in an email like this...
GREAT ROMEO FLOOD OF '08.
"So, I'm sittin there enjoying Jets/Pats with Rayner, Dunfee, and Pa Riddle when you hear kind of like this sloshing crash come from behind us. Chris jumps up and notices water leaking in from the window. Huh. Get some towels. Upon further inspection, there's three feet of water in his window wells. Upon further, further inspection there's a freaking lake in his backyard/under his deck, with a rushing torrent all headed straight to the lowest point, the window wells. There is just water pouring in now. The rain falling looks like some sort of disaster movie. I would have thought they were shooting The Perfect Storm in my man's back yard. So Chris sprints outside and starts hooking up this small like half horse water pump that he has for the pool while the rest of us grab 5 gallon buckets and shovels and go into disaster relief mode. Here's the problem though? What the frick do you do with the water? You can't just dump it in the yard because the yard is funneling into the basement. The Pool! Ah ha! Rayner's pool is now a lake. Complete with sandy bottom and I think I saw a few fish. I don't know how many gallons a pool holds, (like 10-20k depending on dims) but we easily dumped 200 into it. Not to mention excavating half of the backyard. I don't even know how long this went on. Awhile. Eventually the rain let up some, the mounds of dirt were high enough, and the pump could get ahead. Wow. Oh, and we were all in church clothes. Woot. Very impressed with LD (Lindsey-my sister) out there with her husband bailing water. Meeg too. If Dunfee's back hurts this morning it's because he spent the first 20 minutes lugging trash cans of water out of the wells. (estimated weight between 125 and 150lbs, picked up 3ft below your feet no less) My body did not want to get out of bed this morning.
Overall, we learned 3 things.
1. It's all about the root system when stopping water. You gotta find the dirt with tons of weeds.
2. Chris's basement is the absolute lowest point in Macomb county. Frick. (no lie, there were like people kayaking bye. It's like those dessert films where an Oasis forms after a rain. Well, that Oasis.... Chris's backyard/basement)
3. I'll do anything for free Jets pizza."
The side yard of our house. The water was up to the middle of my calf.
We then rented a gas powered pump to get all the water out of the backyard. It did the trick, but lets say I am pretty tired of WATER. This is not the first time we have had water issues in the basement. I am thankful that the wall and carpet did dry out and we should not have to replace anything.
Thankfully we had people to help us or we might still be bailing buckets of water...
Where all the water was coming in...(this was after we spent a long time bailing buckets out of this three foot hole)
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